The following invention relates to a method and apparatus for measuring the widths of very short pulses such as those that might be encountered in communication and computing systems that have frequencies in the gigahertz range.
A problem frequently encountered by measuring instruments which are used to measure the electrical properties of computing and communications equipment is that given the frequencies at which such equipment operates, the pulse widths of information signals generated within such equipment are very short. For some applications it is frequently necessary to know or to be able to characterize the width of these very short pulses, which have widths on the order of 10.sup.3 -10.sup.2 picoseconds or less. Heretofore such measurements have only been possible in very expensive digital sampling oscilloscopes.